Optical detection of range, often referenced by a mnemonic, LIDAR, for light detection and ranging, is used for a variety of applications, from altimetry, to imaging, to collision avoidance. LIDAR provides finer scale range resolution with smaller beam sizes than conventional microwave ranging systems, such as radio-wave detection and ranging (RADAR). Optical detection of range can be accomplished with several different techniques, including direct ranging based on round trip travel time of an optical pulse to a target, and chirped detection based on a frequency difference between a transmitted chirped optical signal and a returned signal scattered from a target.
To achieve acceptable range accuracy and detection sensitivity, direct long range LIDAR systems use short pulse lasers with low pulse repetition rate and extremely high pulse peak power. The high pulse power can lead to rapid degradation of optical components. Chirped LIDAR systems use long optical pulses with relatively low peak optical power. In this configuration, the range accuracy depends on the chirp bandwidth rather than the pulse duration, and therefore excellent range accuracy can still be obtained.
Useful optical chirp bandwidths have been achieved using wideband radio frequency (RF) electrical signals to modulate an optical carrier. Recent advances in chirped LIDAR include using the same modulated optical carrier as a reference signal that is combined with the returned signal at an optical detector to produce in the resulting electrical signal a relatively low beat frequency that is proportional to the difference in frequencies between the references and returned optical signals. This kind of beat frequency detection of frequency differences at a detector is called heterodyne detection. It has several advantages known in the art, such as the advantage of using RF components of ready and inexpensive availability. Recent work described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,742,152, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein, except for terminology that is inconsistent with the terminology used herein, show a novel simpler arrangement of optical components that uses, as the reference optical signal, an optical signal split from the transmitted optical signal. This arrangement is called homodyne detection in that patent.